bigapplesauce | History Obliterates [closed]

Current Music: November 26, 2013

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History Obliterates [closed]

Steven is finally gone, and the Balladeer is alone with himself.

He needed this. He hates to be alone, but he needed this. For days the knowledge (and lack thereof) of what he's done has been crawling under his skin like a physical itch - the one assassin he should be most familiar with, and all he knows is what Greta relayed to him second-hand, from a search somebody did on their cell phone. It's funny. It's really very funny.

One way or another, he ought to know everything about this lost assassination. Either it's his job, or it's his. So once he's alone, he takes himself to a library and gets out every reasonable book he can find, plus a few documentaries on DVD. There seems to be a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the whole thing; sadly, he can't quite convince himself any of them could be true. If Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, the Balladeer would never have any connection with him at all.

(The stop at the liquor store is an afterthought, a whim built on memories of a thousand morose drinking sessions he never joined. He wonders bitterly if Sam would laugh, and buys whiskey the man could never afford.)

He goes home and spends the day reading. At some point, he opens a bottle. He meant to eat something with it - that helps, right? - but instead he ends up putting one of the documentaries on to watch. He just needs to know.

He loses track of time.

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Greta sighs when he shrugs her off, but pulls her hand back. She doesn't want to smother him, and she certainly knows how it feels to not think you deserve any comfort.

Still, that doesn't mean she has to take any of this quietly. "No disrespect to your universe," she says with a disapproving little frown that suggests all the disrespect, actually, "but it never did make that much sense. It wasn't even just you and them; there were other people - crowds of other people. How could you possibly have known?"

Edited 2016-04-02 22:48 (UTC)

"They don't count. They're not even real." He regrets it as soon as he's said it. That's not fair. At some point in time, somewhere else, they were. The Balladeer has never discounted the presidents, after all, even if they're just as oblivious to him as all the bystanders. It's a slippery slope. Even if they weren't dead at the end of things, they matter as much as anybody.

He sighs and tries to figure out how to correct himself. "No, I mean - they weren't there." It was only memories of them. They'd done nothing to deserve being trapped like that. He snorts. "They might've been more real than me, I dunno."

There's a considering pause as Greta wonders how best to respond to all this. She's yet to plainly state some of their collective theories from the other day. Part of her worried that 'it was all some sort of fiction' would be too overwhelming on top of everything else... but if he's drinking himself into a state because he feels personally responsible for things that happened decades ago in this universe, well. Maybe the thought that he was just playing a role would be a comfort.

"You know," she starts cautiously, "the other day, when we were trying to figure all this out, we thought... well, we guessed that your universe might not be... real, exactly." That might not be the best way to put it, but he used the term, first. "That it sounded more like a story, with the way things kept repeating. Maybe not a book, because of all the music, but something like a - a show, or a play."

It sounds a bit mad, and she's not sure she's helping, but she barrels onward, anyway. "We were looking up some of the assassins, like Booth, and none of the pictures from history look quite right, not like how I remember from that dream. Maybe none of them were really who they... were." Her brow furrows. Is that really the best she can do, clarity-wise?

She rubs her forehead and sighs. "I think I might need a drink," she mutters.

For such a wild theory, the Balladeer barely seems to react. Instead, he lifts his arm from his face, tilts his head, and peers in the direction of the television without really seeming to see it.

"History, story," he says, turning away again after a moment. "Same thing after a while. 'S no audience here, so this is probably realer." There never has been, to the point that he stopped looking for them months ago. He can't even see the space where they used to exist, but he hasn't yet lost that trick of the eyes that let him distinguish it to begin with. The absence was one of the first things he noticed when he arrived; he just never let it bother him terribly. Before, working himself into an existential crisis when he so clearly did exist hadn't seemed worth it.

As it turns out, his physical presence is maybe not the sure sign of reality he thought it was.

Reaching down, he fishes around for a bottle. Greta's moved them, though, and the ones here were probably all empty anyway. "'Smore in the kitchen, I think. Didn't know what I wanted." If he bought enough alcohol, surely he'd hit on at least one he liked.

Greta's midway through getting to her feet when the Balladeer mentions an audience, and she then she wavers for a moment before straightening. Has he ever mentioned that before? No, she definitely would have remembered.

And she definitely needs a drink.

Iman has given her enough in the way of cocktail lessons for her to not be at a complete loss. Granted, she doesn't have the usual ingredients at her disposal, but there's vodka, and juice in the fridge. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it'll do.

"There was an audience?" she asks as she pours a modest measure of vodka in the bottom of a glass and fills the rest with orange juice. "You could see them? They saw you?" She gives her head a slow shake, rejoining him on the couch. "That sounds... distracting."

The Balladeer remains prone on the couch as Greta goes to make her drink. See, she understands the need for alcohol now.

Her careful comment - she doesn't know what to say, that's why he never told - just makes him shrug. "Seems like...like it'd be weird not to know your future." Actually, it's incredibly normal. But linear time was an interesting thing to get used to. It could have been distressing, to live in such uncertainty after an utterly predictable existence, but he's always been able to roll with things.

Point being, anything is normal if you've always lived with it. "Nobody else saw 'em. Just me, just sort of - " He lifts a hand, and it wavers up and down for a few seconds before he finishes, " - thereish." It's not a good demonstration, but he's not sure how to really indicate it. "Like one of those trick pictures."

"So it was like a play," she says, taking a pensive sip. "And if no one else could see them, that means you were different from the rest of them. Like the narrator." Iman was right. Or so it seems, anyway.

She falls into a thoughtful silence for a few moments. There's still no obvious connection between the Balladeer and Oswald, no obvious reason why the narrator would suddenly turn into one of his own subjects. The only inciting incident they might have is the assassins mobbing him, though she can't - or perhaps just doesn't want to - imagine how that would lead to Oswald's appearance.

"Maybe," she hazards, speaking slowly as the idea takes shape, "when they all ganged up on you, whatever they were trying to do... maybe that would have led to you turning into Oswald, but the Rift took you before it could happen. That might be why you don't remember any of it. It just... didn't happen, for you." She raises her eyebrows at him. "Even if it could have happened, I mean..." she gestures towards the stacked books with her glass, "you didn't do any of this. You're not even from here."

"It's the same thing," he insists fiercely. His world had that much reality; it had to have done, or there was no point to anything. "If I didn't do it here, I did it somewhere."

The other part is a little more tempting. But he can't really buy it, after a moment. "If it didn't happen, why'd it just happen?" He has, pretty incontrovertably, turned into Oswald. It didn't last, but who's to say it won't sometime? What is he going to do next November, or on the anniversary of Oswald's birth, or literally any other important time?

(The man's deathday has come and gone already with no change. That's some comfort.)

Greta frowns in disapproval. "Not if the Rift took you, first," she says shortly. "You could have been Oswald. I could have been dead, but I'm not tromping off to the Park with a shovel to dig myself a grave."

It's not a perfect comparison. She still mourned the loss of the life she could have had, and she doesn't really expect the Balladeer to easily shake off the knowledge of what could have been, either. But here, now, his supposed crimes seem as distant and unreal as her own supposed death. He can't dwell on it forever.

She leans over to put her glass on the coffee table, then fixes the Balladeer with a look that wavers somewhere between anxious and stern. "Listen to me. I don't know why it happened, but I do know that you are not Lee Harvey Oswald. You are the Balladeer, and you're my friend, and you're a good man. Oswald wouldn't have taken in Steven - he certainly wouldn't have strolled into ROMAC, unarmed, to rescue me. You're not the same person. And whatever would have happened in your universe," she grimaces, because it really is a terrible universe, "you deserve to be free of it."

Is any of this getting through? She lets her hand drop with a sigh. "Maybe the Rift did us both a favor, bringing us here."

The Balladeer laughs hollowly. "No kidding."

He leans back, shutting his eyes again. It doesn't seem fair that he should just abdicate responsibility for all this. That's something he's always sneered at in the others - they brag about their actions easily enough, but they're never willing to accept what the actual consequences were. But if this were happening to someone else? Say, Greta? He doubts he'd sit and argue that she should blame herself.

Whatever it may look like, he's not dropping off to sleep. "I bet it's falling apart without me." He felt conflicted about that even before Oswald. The assassins' fates don't worry him much; it's just that he spent his whole life seeing to one job, and then just...left.

Given what he knows now, that may have been a mercy for more than just himself.

"What'm I supposed to do?" he asks with a sigh. "It's not - it's supposed to be me and them, not...this." How can he even begin to make up for it?

Greta retrieves her glass just in time to snort faintly into it when the Balladeer mentions his universe falling apart. "Let it," she says pitilessly. It doesn't deserve him. It never did, really, which makes the Oswald revelation all the more cruel. It couldn't just let the Balladeer go, let him have something like a real life, oh no. That would be far too easy. He has to be dogged by some assassin, and if the others are unavailable, well, there's always the one lurking beneath his own skin.

It's really, profoundly unfair.

She leans against the back of the couch as well, but sideways, so she can watch him. "Be you," she says simply. "Play your music in the Park. Brighten people's days. Keep Steven company. Keep--" she gestures vaguely with her glass, "keep doing all the things you do all the time that none of them ever would, because..." She wants to say 'you're better than them,' but can guess how that might be received just now. "... Because you have a choice," she says instead. "You're not stuck in a loop, watching history repeat itself over and over. You can do whatever you want."

Just that, huh? A life of simple kindness. Mailmen and usherettes. Despite himself, the Balladeer smiles.

"I used to say something like that to them sometimes." They could have been better - even there, even them, he thought they could have been better people. History already happened, but that was no reason to stay trapped in their own cycles of bitterness. If they wanted, they could have learned from it. They didn't have to revel in their own cruelty for the rest of time.

Maybe that was foolish of him.

But it's kind of her. Painfully so; he can feel tears welling up again. Crying this much is another new experience. "Hey." He tilts his head to look at her, reaching out a hand earnestly. "You're - you're the best friend I've ever had." It isn't a high bar, but the point stands.

Did he? That doesn't surprise her, and she makes a 'well, there you have it' gesture with her glass. It's good advice. And unlike the rest of them, the Balladeer is actually in a position (or perhaps just of a disposition) to take it.

The vodka is starting to kick in, making her feel warm and expansive. As such, she's rather moved by the simple act of him finally turning to look at her. The fact that he's on the verge of tears doesn't help matters, and her throat is already tightening in sympathy when he reaches out a hand and pronounces her the best friend he's ever had. Now she's the one fighting back tears, and she hastily sets her glass down so she can reach back with both hands.

"Come here," she says with a sort of maudlin determination. "You need a hug. I need to hug you." It's very important - so much so that she doesn't so much wait for him to meet her as she does haul him over and into her arms. There we go, that's better. "I'm so glad you're here," she says, her tone bordering on fierce even though it's a bit muffled by his shoulder. "It's like Iman said. You're family."

Edited 2016-04-05 11:06 (UTC)

The Balladeer had barely started to move when Greta grabs him and pulls him into her arms. He makes a surprised sound in the back of his throat, one that quickly morphs into a chuckle. "Heyyyyy!"

He works his arms out to wrap them around her, tilting his head into her shoulder. "Did she really say that?" Iman's nice, but they haven't spent much time together except for that one dream. His voice might start getting choked up again; he's not usually quite this emotional, but this has been a roller-coaster of a day. An alcohol-soaked roller-coaster. "That's so nice."

Greta hums in affirmation. "You were there. It was back when I was a mess, and she said that as long as we were all here, together, we were a family." She pulls back just enough so that she can look at him properly. "It goes both ways," she insists, lifting a hand to his cheek, because it's important that he pay attention, and understand. She really means this. "We're here for you, too. No one's giving up on anyone."

Was he? The Balladeer doesn't remember that in the least. But it was a rough night for everyone - and, quite frankly, he probably hadn't interpreted the remark to include himself. Not like this, at least. That night was about Greta, not him.

He meets Greta's gaze as she draws back, caught somewhere between tears and happiness. "I don't - "

Truthfully, he doesn't really know how to handle people being so nice to him. It was a pleasant surprise when he first arrived, but he's never expected this level of support from anybody. He's always been on his own. Not being murdered was always the most he expected of anyone, and even that doesn't seem to have worked out in the long run. The Rift really did do him a favor, didn't it? The Balladeer lifts a hand to cover the one on his cheek. "Thank you."

This might be a bit much. Beneath the haze of stubborn fondness, she's aware of that. He's been through so much recently, and he's not used to kindness. Her instinct is to just pile it on, because he deserves it, and who knows how many years' worth of repeated histories they're making up for, but it's bound to be overwhelming.

Oh, well. She's tipsy; he'll just have to cope.

"You are very welcome." Using his shoulder as leverage, she hoists herself up to press a kiss to his forehead, then sinks back down onto the couch cushions. "You're all right," she adds firmly, more like a promise than a question.

Right. This is good. Even though Oswald's been gone for days, it feels like the Balladeer is finally, fully returned. "You should eat that," she says with a nod towards the muffin. "And we should find something nice to watch while we sober up." She brightens. "And I should text Iman! I have to ask her something. 'S very important." She untangles herself from the Balladeer, but doesn't really move away, instead shifting to lean companionably against him while she rummages for her phone.

The Balladeer snorts softly, a little bewildered by the kiss. That's definitely never happened before. But, he decides, he's okay with it!

"Okaaaay." He shifts back around to grab the muffin, breaking off a piece. It is pretty good - and, as it happens, he's just now realizing that he is kinda hungry. How long ago was lunch? Popping another chunk of muffin in his mouth, he turns to watch Greta text. "Are you having fun dating her? She's wanted to since forever, y'know."

"I really am," Greta replies with a shy smile, going a bit pink for reasons that have nothing to do with the alcohol. "She's amazing." She's so lucky, and she could probably gush at length with no more prompting than he's given her. Maybe he'd even appreciate the distraction. But she doesn't want to roll around in her own good fortune while the Balladeer's still recovering himself.

Besides, his awareness that Iman had been pining after her is a distraction in its own right. Greta brightens in incredulous delight. "I know! I could hardly believe it when she told me, but..." she trails off mid-sentence, then turns to blink up at the Balladeer. "Did--you must have gotten those texts!"

That part is still news to her. Well, she knows they happened, but since they'd had Oswald to deal with during that whole revelation, she hadn't pursued it as much as she might've done, otherwise. In fact, until just now, she'd almost managed to forget about them.

She really wants to ask what Iman said. She probably shouldn't. She definitely shouldn't. If she asks anyone, it ought to be Iman.

"What did she say?" she asks with an eager grin. "Do you remember?" Whoops.

The Balladeer snorts. He sure doesn't mind talking about things other than his own vortex of despair. "She said she was looking for you 'cause she loveeed you~," he recalls, sing-song intonation included. "And then we got in a fight 'cause I lied about knowing where you were. That was the time with all the curses." She probably knew that anyway, if she knew the texts existed? Oh well.

"That's when I told her I'm Beth." Which she has never stopped calling him since. The Balladeer finds it pretty amusing, though; certainly enough to have let his daemon take the name for her own.

...he hasn't thought about her since Oswald. He wonders what she'll say.

"She'ssssss a scary lady when she's mad," he opines seriously, gesturing with the remnants of his muffin. "I like her."

Greta briefly hides her face behind her hand, giggling helplessly in mingled embarrassment and delight. She's never going to get over the fact that everyone else knew. There are probably Rifties she's never even met who would just know her as the woman Iman's in love with.

She's not entirely sure how she ought to feel about that. It's been refreshing, existing on her own terms instead of in constant relation to her husband... but to be similarly associated with Iman is a thrill. Not least of all because Iman isn't someone to be trifled with.

"She likes you, too," Greta says, glancing down at her texts. "In fact..." her smile widens for a moment as a few more missives come through, and then she shifts to face the Balladeer, her expression sobering a little.

"Listen," she continues with a bit more gravity, "this isn't a promise, because none of us can make promises about this sort of thing. But if we figure out the Rift, and people are able to go home on purpose, you can come with us. To Iman's world. You're invited. We don't want you going back to your universe or getting left behind here, and--and I don't want to lose you, so..." oh dear, she's tearing up again. She pulls in a deep breath and makes sure she has control of herself before finishing, "if you want to, and if we can make it happen, you're with us."

Of course, the whole thing resulted in the Balladeer thinking of Iman as "that woman who loves Greta" for a good while. It can go both ways!

He shifts, withdrawing a little into himself at the sudden seriousness. Are they going back to talking about sad things? But as Greta goes on, a smile breaks across his face. "Really? I always - I was gonna try to stay here, if I could." Of course he's thought about it. Everyone else worries so much about going home that the topic tends to surface. Some days it seems almost inevitable, settling like a cold stone in his gut. More often, he puts it out of his mind, or tells himself that he'll remain in Manhattan forever if he has to. And honestly, as long as he can convince himself of that, he doesn't mind the idea.

It isn't perfect. New York would seem emptier without the other Rifties. Of course he has local friends too, but he never tells them much about himself. After the revelations of recent days, he knows he never will. Hiding so much feels strange, and a little lonely. But it would be better than going home. He would have made do.

But going home with someone else?

He could go with Greta and Iman. He knows it isn't certain. Nothing is ever certain, even when you live a life entirely free of Rifts. But it's a possibility.

The Balladeer nods. He would be tearing up too, he thinks, except that he's cried an awful lot today already. He's a little bit of a mess. "Thanks. I'd like that."

Staying in Manhattan would be a step up from returning to his universe, in much the same way as it would be a step up from returning to hers. There's nothing good waiting for either of them, making it a rather low bar to clear.

But all the talk she's heard about escaping this place has been couched in terms of bypassing the Rift (or, less often, harnessing it), not destroying it. As long as it's capable of acting on its own whims, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't. There's no guarantee that it wouldn't send someone straight back to a universe where nothing awaits them. It's already proven itself to be capable of just that.

The Balladeer might be perfectly happy to stay in Manhattan, but as long as the Rift is here, he wouldn't be safe. Iman's universe, on the other hand, is full of clever people who understand all this multiple universe stuff. Even if it isn't technically beyond the Rift's reach, maybe they could make it so. It's something to hope for, at least.

After the week he's had, the Balladeer could probably use something to hope for.

She wasn't sure if he'd concede to deserving as much - not if he still thinks of himself as a disaster waiting to happen - and she beams in a watery mixture of approval and relief when he nods. "You're getting another hug," she announces, leaning forward to give him just that. Did he even get hugs before he came here? Probably not. Well, he's getting them now. "You're welcome," she adds. Then, "Of course you're welcome."

Her phone buzzes in her hand, and she lifts it to read Iman's texts from over the Balladeer's shoulder. A moment later, she lets out a delighted huff of laughter.

"Look, see?" she says, pulling back and holding her phone a few wavering inches from the Balladeer's nose. "Iman says 'Beth's family'!"

The Balladeer cups his hand around Greta's, drawing the phone back a few more inches so he can focus on it. "Hahaha! I'll tell her!" Or...maybe she knows already? She probably does. How do dream demons work?

In all seriousness, though, that's so nice. Have he and Iman ever even talked without Greta mediating, outside of dreams at least? She didn't have to say anything like that about him. "Tell her thanks," he says, letting the phone go again and leaning back. That means more even than the invitation to her world. It's more real. Escaping Manhattan is wonderful to think about; it also might never happen. But here, right now, he has people who think of him as family.

"I never had a family," he says casually, words still flowing much more freely than normal. It's not an absence he ever felt keenly. Even the other buskers know he hasn't got one, though they assume some long-distant tragedy, filling in the gaps of his past for him. "Not to be depressing! It's fine. But that's...it's cool."

(For all that he was claiming Oswald's family earlier, they don't occur to him right now.)

Greta snorts out a laugh. "She meant you-Beth, not Beth-Beth," she says, though after a moment, her expression turns thoughtful. "Though I s'pose it's sort of the same thing." She considers it for another moment, then nods judiciously. "You should tell her."

She leans back beside him, her attention divided between him and texting Iman, until he mentions not having a family. At least that part isn't really news to her, but she still winces in sympathy and shifts to face him.

"That's not so unusual, back home," she says with an absent little nod. "Fathers run off or pass away - half the time after they've remarried someone awful because their first wife..." she trails off, then makes a face. Ugh. She doesn't need to be thinking about this. The knowledge of her own death isn't quite stale enough for her to feel even a begrudging, pitch-black amusement over how bloody typical it was.

Enough of that. "Anyway," she continues doggedly, "you have one, now, so you'll have to get used to it."

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